The temperatures are the temperatures, LH. One thing that is new is the discovery of the Niiler striations which may indicate the ocean systems are scrubbing more CO2 out of the atmosphere than was previously predicted.

But I would like to know what data ou have been reviewing that has changed your mind. I'd love to get over global warming because something I read on the MOAB made it all okay!!!

I'm not saying that we aren't in a warming phase right now, Amos. I'm saying that it's due to the sun pouring more energy onto planet Earth...the sun being in a more active phase in recent times...and that it has very little to do with human affairs at all.

I'm saying that the "crisis" we are being presented with in the media is mostly hype...hype aimed at some political objective, I'm not sure what. And it's fashionable right now, and a lot of people are making a lot of money by jumping on that bandwagon. And if you are in the field of research and you oppose fashion you run a real risk of: ridicule...loss of work...and losing your sources of funding.

The Earth has been through many of these warming phases before, long before the industrial revolution occurred. It has been through at least one significant cooling phase during the industrial revolution. It survived all of them quite nicely.

The only thing we really have to fear is the end of this overall warm phase that we've been in for about the last 10,000 years...and the onset of another lengthy ice age. If that were to occur, then our civilization would be very heavily damaged by it.

Do you know that in the medieval warm period Greenland was so warm that the Vikings settled there and were growing crops? The planet is clearly quite a bit cooler now. You can't grow crops in Greenland these days. What made the planet so warm when the Vikings were in their heyday? There was no industrial revolution happening at that time.

I'll tell you what did...the sun did. It was in a more active phase at that time, and the Earth was warmer.

Here's an interesting thing I came across in my reading, Amos. It seems that global warming itself tends to cause an increase in the buildup up CO2 in the atmosphere through natural processes.

Thus, rather than the CO2 increase leading the warming, it may well be the other way around.

I am not saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. It is. And it contributes some to planetary warming. But what I am saying is that planetary warming phases themselves appear to cause more natural release of CO2, and that the part the CO2 plays in the process regarding increasing overall warming is quite small...and not the significant factor in starting off a global warming phase, which is more likely started off and basically governed by the changing flows of energy between the sun and the Earth.

More release of CO2 encourages the growth of plants. Increased vegetation in time reduces the CO2. So it's a self-balancing system, as long as plants are allowed to flourish over vast areas.

Hower, we ARE most definitely doing damage to the planet by cutting down our old growth forests, such as in the Amazon, and that's a huge problem. It leads to the ruination of land, desertification, destruction of many plants and animals, and so on. But this is another issue quite apart from CO2 and global warming.

Remember: the primary greenhouse gas is water vapor! So if you want to reduce greenhouse gases...stop watering your lawn!!!!! ;-)

Agreed, Rapaire, it's probably a number of different factors. The reading I've done lately makes me doubt that CO2 is the major one among those factors, though...or even a major one...and it also makes me doubt that global warming is anything more than a cyclical natural event which has occurred repeatedly for millions of years, in between very long glacial periods, and without any contribution from human industrial activity.

Therefore I think we are being scammed at the moment by the global warming scare.

I'm not too worried about global warming, frankly. What does worry me a great deal is the massive deforestation that is occurring, for one and the loss of arable land for another, and the loss of pure drinking water sources, and the possibility of global cooling. We can afford to be in a warm period. Warm periods are good for almost every form of life on this planet. We cannot afford to go into another 100,000 year long ice age.

However, we couldn't stop that if it started again, no matter how much CO2 we pumped into the atmosphere, so I guess there's really little point in my worrying about it. It's beyond our control.

Pardon the mundane post and habitual lack of wit, what kind of shape would the world be in if some of us didn't actively practice the art of mundaness, eh?

Re: baggies of water and flies, a couple of restaurants in my area have starting doing this and swear by it. However, they just started doing it a month or so ago, and fly season is not fully upon us yet.

One of them had hand-printed a little card with an explanation, and it was similar to this explanation..

I sprinkle brewer's yeast in the dry dog food in the summer to help with the fly problem, and I don't know if it works but they LOVE brewer's yeast. I put up the baggie yesterday. I'd been seeing flies on Cinnamon each time I looked out, but every time I looked today when she was on the porch there weren't any flies on her.

There was a health worker visiting some of the farms in the backcountry here, trying to convince the hidebound old ranchers that some of the "modern" advances were good ideas. One in particular was adamant about window screens -- ABSOLUTELY NOT! Too expensive and besides, his daddy didn't need 'em and his granddaddy didn't and you know the sort of person. Told her all he needed was to sprinkle a little lime in the outhouse now and then and the fly problem was solved.

Couple months later the health worker dropped by and found the house replete with screens: window screens, screen doors, even screens over the vents in the eaves and in the attic. She was stunned, and asked the old boy what had converted him him. He hemmed and hawed around and find said, "Well, there wuz these white footprints on ma food."

Among other things, I was driving out to dispose of hazardous household waste (mostly dead batteries) and when passing the golf course my windshield (windscreen in the UK) was smacked by a golf ball. There was no damage to the car, other than cleaning the driver's seat.

The cops had earlier stopped me and told me I was wanted at a certain address. When I got there the Chief of Police and the County Sheriff were waiting. No Mom, this was a Good Thing and it has to do with the Library and team building and stuff like that. But they didn't need to put out an APB -- they could have called the Library and had them call me! I guess top cops just want to have fun.

Hi Mom! I broke out of mundaneness for a little while this evening at a lovely pot luck and song circle at Dani's in celebration of the arrival of Mr. & Mrs. Morse of Maine for a visit to our little town here in the sweet, sunny south. Met Mudcatter Abby Sales, and visited with new and old friends. Nary a legionaire in the bunch, either.

Chicken and spicy sausages were grilled, salads were tossed, strawberries over scones were served, banjos and guitars were picked, though not any noses, at least not in my presence. Lemonade, iced tea, and assorted spirits were imbibed.

Home to more 'music' in the form of "Guitar Hero" being played by Sum Yung Sun and his bud who is here for a sleep-over.

Now I return me to my regularly scheduled mundaneness of finding sheets to make a pallet for the friend and clean up the kitchen so I don't have to face it in the morning.

I made extra scones, Mom, so the kids and you could have them with breakfast in the morning.

They're called "gardai" in Ireland, Amos. The singular is "garda." It's short for "An Garda Siochana" or, in English, "The Guardians of the Peace." I've known some of them, and they should be added to the Great Dictum Of Bee-Dubya-Ell.

By the way, the singular form is pronounced "guard-a" and the plural "guard-ee". The uniformed gardai are unarmed except for a wooden truncheon -- if by "unarmed" you mean "they don't carry firearms on their person."

Right--exactly my point. Alerted to your intention to have a pistol-packing party wihtin the peaceful confines of their ancient and revered town, they might break open their emergency armamenta just this once, just for you.

My staff of supervisory personnel are not going to Dublin with me, nor am I going to bring arms (other than those provided by Mama Nature) into Ireland with me. Well, maybe a pocketknife, but nothing else.

It's been my experience that if you really really need weapons you can make them or find them. Unfortunately.

The supervisors have to stay back home in Idaho and represent the Library at the budget hearing. It is they who wish to form a Pistol Shooting Team and eventually challenge the local cops to a target shoot at the range.

This has gone so far that Browning (the firearms company) has been requested to supply us with seven .22 pistols at better than half off. These pistols (Buckmark) have been used by various pistol teams around the US for what is called "Bullseye" shooting.

We would be shooting NRA B-3 targets at 10 meters. Various names have been proposed for the group, none of which have yet been accepted:

Well, its not all that simple, Still. It isn't even a straight triangle spinner as it would be if the number were 23Delta32. But it won't be because we don't have a Delta chiffre thingy as a number.

Instead it is an elevated offset triangle, the top part of the 4. a right triangle. Computing the impact of this spinner around an axis free to locate within the bounds of the triangle is no small task, and the effective movement is probably not even cyclical. Irregularities are introduced by the sin/cosine equations modulated by the varying impact (assuming a uniform field of gravity) of the varying leverage of the stem of the "4". And assuming that the mass distribution is consistent with the placement of black pixels or dots. Assuming, indeed, that a character has any mass at all. An irregular ellipsoid series can be expected.

It is my belief that character has mass, because George Bush, over the last eight years, has obviously lost his and he looks like he's walking in a total vacuum-driven implosion caused by the loss of all character. He looks gray and wrinkled, like a free-diver at 100 meters.